As a senior entering my last two weeks of college, the real world and jobs has been at the forefront of my mind. The combination of applying to jobs and taking this class, which has opened my eyes to the many inequalities women face in day –to – day life, has got me thinking about the discrepancies between women and men in the workplace.
Why is it that workplace earnings still gap between women and men today? According to the General Accountability Office, “the weekly earnings of full – time working women were about three fourths of men’s weekly earnings” (About.com). Women earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts (About.com). Reasons for this gap in earnings between women and men suggest that it is a result of women balancing work and family life. Women often work less full –time jobs than men to care for their children. On the other hand, men with children tend to receive a boost in their earnings… why is this?
Clearly, sexism is still very prevalent in the workplace. There are not enough reasons or evidence to suggest why men still typically get paid more than women. This needs to change and perhaps change can occur through activism and electing political candidates who stress women’s rights.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/womenspay.htm
Katya, I agree with you and think this problem with the gender wage gap in the workforce is still very prevalent today. Although, I do believe that there are more women now who are getting paid more than they had many years ago, however the pay is still unequal. The difficult thing is that it's hard to find the right answer to solve this issue. It almost seems as though our whole patriarchal cultural mentality will need to change before we can fix this, but that will be difficult to change in itself.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing though is that more women today are graduating from college, which means that there will be more highly-educated women who will be applying for jobs than men. I think this trend will only increase and hopefully be a huge wake-up-call for men in the workforce that they need to start taking women more seriously. I think our generation has the power to change this.